PEI Staff

Mainsail Partners, a growth-equity firm that straddles venture capital and private equity, announced a new hire to help portfolio companies with recruiting, underscoring the growing importance private backers are assigning to talent acquisition in Silicon Valley's tight job market. Kathryn Cavanaugh, formerly of Sightline Partners and De Novo Ventures, has joined as vice president of talent to recruit senior-level executives, board members and advisors.

Shareholder Representative Services’ latest Q&A features Dr. Hugh Rienhoff.  Rienhoff led FerroKin to an acquisition by Shire valued at up to $325 million. Trained as a physician, Rienhoff spent eight years working as a scientist and eight years as a venture capitalist focused on biotechnology prior to becoming an entrepreneur.

In late 2008, Christopher Rizik, a VC and an entrepreneur rolled up his sleeves and re-invented his career. In doing so, he may well have impacted the trajectory of VC and startups in Michigan. And even the neighboring state of Ohio.

Flybridge Capital Partners general partner Michael Greeley weighs in on the latest NVCA figures, and on the few new vehicles that completed fundraisings.

In their latest report on the long-term ills affecting the IPO markets, David Weild and his co-authors laser lock on market structure and persuasively argue in a series of Grant Thornton white papers that increasing “tick” sizes will restore capital formation, jobs and investor confidence. Tick sizes? Yes, they’re talking about tick sizes (i.e., the minimum increment in which a stock can trade) and they’re right.

Shareholder Representative Services’ latest Q&A features Alan Masarek.  Masarek led Quickoffice to an acquisition by Google in 2012.

MorrisAnderson director Mark Iammartino weighs in with a guest post and tells lenders that deep-dives can help unearth operational issues before they come overwhelming obstacles. And he's got a great example of what not to do.

peHUB gets a guest column from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures' Charlie O'Donnell, who argues that the biggest catalyst for the New York City startup scene might be more entrepreneurs like Paul and Rony from Indeed.com--the startup built itself to more than 500 employees prior to its mega-exit.